Analgesic effects of lappaconitine in leukemia bone pain in a mouse model

Xiao-Cui Zhu; Chen-Tao Ge; Pan Wang; Jia-Li Zhang; Yuan-Yang Yu; Cai-Yun Fu

doi:10.7717/peerj.936

Analgesic effects of lappaconitine in leukemia bone pain in a mouse model

PeerJ. 2015 May 7:3:e936. doi: 10.7717/peerj.936. eCollection 2015.

Authors

Xiao-Cui Zhu¹, Chen-Tao Ge¹, Pan Wang¹, Jia-Li Zhang¹, Yuan-Yang Yu¹, Cai-Yun Fu¹

Affiliation

¹ Lab of Proteomics & Molecular Enzymology, School of Life Sciences, Zhejiang Sci-Tech University , Hangzhou , China.

Abstract

Bone pain is a common and severe symptom in cancer patients. The present study employed a mouse model of leukemia bone pain by injection K562 cells into tibia of mouse to evaluate the analgesic effects of lappacontine. Our results showed that the lappaconitine treatment at day 15, 17 and 19 could effectively reduce the spontaneous pain scoring values, restore reduced degree in the inclined-plate test induced by injection of K562 cells, as well as restore paw mechanical withdrawal threshold and paw withdrawal thermal latency induced by injection of K562 cells to the normal levels. Additionally, the molecular mechanisms of lappaconitine's analgesic effects may be related to affect the expression levels of endogenous opioid system genes (POMC, PENK and MOR), as well as apoptosis-related genes (Xiap, Smac, Bim, NF-κB and p53). Our present results indicated that lappaconitine may become a new analgesic agent for leukemia bone pain management.

Keywords: Analgesia; Bone pain; Lappaconitine; Leukemia.

Grants and funding

This work was supported by grants from the Zhejiang Provincial Nature Science Foundation of China (No. LY14C050003), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 31470071), the New Century 151 Talent Project of Zhejiang Province, the 521 Talent Foundation of Zhejiang Sci-Tech University, Zhejiang Provincial Top Key Discipline of Biology. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.